Information on this page can assist you in supporting faculty and instructors with copyright questions they may have related to teaching, particularly preparing and distributing course materials.

Faculty and instructors who teach at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) are expected to provide course materials to students in compliance with copyright law, the university’s copyright guidelines and licence agreements into which the university has entered (for example, library licence agreements).

As part of the university’s commitment to copyright compliance, faculty are asked annually to acknowledge their responsibilities in this area as outlined in the Use of Materials Protected by Copyright policy. The Faculty Statement of Copyright Compliance is an annual digital sign-off to promote awareness of the policy and produce evidence of the university’s compliance process. The statement is sent out via e-mail with the subject “Copyright Compliance Acknowledgement - ACTION Required”. Faculty will be asked to visit the Copyright Compliance SharePoint Online site to respond to the statement. The link to the sign-off is provided in the email.

For additional instructions and a troubleshooting guide for completing the sign-off, please read the brief instructions provided on our TDX Copyright Knowledge Base webpage. If you receive an “Access Denied due to incorrect credentials” error, please follow these troubleshooting instructions for completing the acknowledgement in a private/incognito web browser window. You may be asked to log in with your NSID and password to continue.

In general, a work can be copied to be distributed to students in a university course for educational purposes if at least one of the following is true:

• the work being copied is in the public domain;
• the copyright holder has explicitly provided you with permission or a licence to use the work;
• the work to be copied is already covered by a licence that permits copying for educational use, such as:
  • Creative Commons licences;
  • open access works;
  • licences that USask has with the publisher of an electronic journal or book;
• the copying is permitted by one of the exceptions in the Copyright Act, such as the Fair Dealing exception for which USask has adopted Fair Dealing Guidelines.

For details about the different ways faculty and instructors can provide students with course materials that are protected by copyright, please see the following pages:

• providing course materials in the classroom;
• providing course materials on a password-protected course website or learning management system;
• providing course materials through the University Library;
• providing course materials through Retail Services.

There is also an instructor frequently asked questions page with some additional information about providing course materials. 

For information about how to obtain copyright permission from a copyright owner please visit our getting permission from a copyright owner page.

If you are interested in arranging a copyright session for your department or college, please contact the copyright coordinator. Presentations about copyright and teaching are offered annually and advertised on the University Library events calendar.